It's bad enough for some prop planes to be referred to as being powered by elastic band. Now the skeptics might start having a dig at business airplane flying on everything from cooking oil to liquefied algae.

With the civil air travel industry under increasing pressure from increasing oil costs and ecological legislation, the race is on to find viable alternatives to standard kerosene and these so far appear to boil down to various types of biofuel.

Not remarkably, the very first trials of alternative fuel were started by British air travel pioneer, Sir Richard Branson, whose Virgin Atlantic began London to Amsterdam flights with limited biofuel use in 2008. This was rapidly followed by Lufthansa and Air New Zealand who each used different blends of regular fuel and bio derivatives including some from made from jatropha which can grow in soil considered too bad for growing mainstream foods.

Jatropha is a genus of around 175 succulent plants, shrubs and trees (some are deciduous, like Jatropha curcas), from the household Euphorbiaceae.

In 2007 Goldman Sachs mentioned Jatropha jatropha curcas as one of the very best candidates for future biodiesel production. It is resistant to drought and bugs, and produces seeds including 27-40% oil.

Recently, US aerospace giant Boeing, Brazilian aerial significant Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research Support Foundation relocated to perform research study and development into making use of biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airline companies Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would serve as strategic experts for the project.

The current airline company to begin explore new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has actually performed internal US flights using a mix of 80 % petroleum based fuel and 20% biofuel made from cooking oil. This mixture, it is declared, can cut harmful emissions by 10%.

One really motivating advancement has actually been the move away from biofuels which complete head on with food customers consequently preventing a price spiral. Not so long ago, a rise in usage of biofuels in vehicles triggered a spike in maize rates as US farmers diverted excessive corn to fuel processing.

Hopefully in the future, airlines and vehicle drivers will focus biofuel intake on non-food sources such as jatropha curcas and algae. It would be a blended blessing indeed if some people ended up starving just to satisfy somebody else's green qualifications.